Kolkata airport modernisation to begin in January

Work on modernising, expanding and renovating the Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport will be taken up from January next year, civil aviation secretary Ashok Chawla said on Friday.

"The work will begin from next January. It will be done by the Airports Authority of India. The work would be completed in about 30 months," Chawla told newsmen after a meeting with Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee.

The Rs 1,500-crore (Rs 15 billion) project, to be funded by the AAI, will include construction of an integrated terminal to handle nearly 16 million domestic and four million international passengers, he said.

The two existing runways will be extended and an additional hangar will be built as part of the project, he added.

Chawla said there was urgent need to build a third runway and the state government had been asked to provide land for this. During the meeting, Chawla informed the chief minister that the airport in Cooch Behar was being revived and would become operational by mid-August.

Noting that the civil aviation ministry had commissioned a feasibility report on operating small commercial aircraft from the Behala airstrip in the metropolis, he said the report would be received within the next three months.